If Saudi Arabia has long stood a scar on the Middle East as its government has preached and financed Wahhabi fundamentalism across the region to better assert its hold over the Islamic world, recent events have betrayed a dangerous acceleration of its policies.

From Western Africa to Southern Arabia, the kingdom has darkened the skies of many nations, sowing fear and fuelling hatred among religious minorities when peace used to define their relations. And though terror may have hidden its face under many different names: al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, Daesh or Boko Haram, behind every banner and every outfit has stood the same dogma, the same dangerous injunction to senseless violence.

Saudi Arabia it needs to be said has sat at the center of it all – both the cornerstone and fountainhead of a new empire of fear.

Few have been those who have dared hold a mirror to the kingdom’s fascist policies – fewer have been those who dared directly oppose Riyadh’s machinations.

But while Saudi Arabia might still be able to hide behind its Western friendships and the wealth of its coffers, its sectarian and hateful narrative has become too obvious to miss – a sign maybe that Riyadh no longer wishes to hide those agendas its Wahhabi clergy has pushed forth.

On Sunday (December 20, 2015) Ismail Shoaib said in an interview for al-Waqt news website that “Informed sources from inside the Nigerian regime have stated that the incident happened in coordination with the Saudi embassy and the Nigerian army directly took the order for attack from the Saudi mission in Abuja.”

If such allegations have been labeled as ludicrous by mainstream media, they nevertheless fit a pattern and a narrative Saudi officials have long expressed against Shia Islam. Days after the Zaria massacre, where as much as a thousand men, women and children were brutally murdered by the military, King Salman referred to the tragedy as Nigeria’s counter-terror effort.

In a conversation with Nigerian President Mohammadu Buhari, King Salman dismissed the killing of hundreds of innocent civilians as an act of counter-terrorism, thus directly associating Shia Islam to terror – a move which betrays Saudi Arabia’s desire to criminalize those who do not abide by Wahhabism’ radical and violent ideology.

But Saudi Arabia’s involvement in Nigeria runs deeper. It appears now that Riyadh not only engineered, but also commandeered the attack against Zaria, a Shia stronghold at the heart of Nigeria’s northern territories.

“We also saw that the commandos driving on an army vehicle who attacked the Hussainiya (Shia religious center) were not Nigerians and were white people who were spraying bullets directly on the people,” Shoaib told al-Waqt news website, stressing that the Nigerian government benefited from Riyadh’s financial largesse over the past six months.

And while Saudi officials and their allies will continue to deny the obvious, how else explain the systematic character of Nigeria’s anti-Shia campaign. More importantly, why would soldiers ever carry out such a well-organized rampage against Zaria if not under strict order of their commanding officers?

Zaria massacre was not a random act of violence prompted by fear of an insurrection as certain factions within Nigeria have claimed – such an attack could herald a second wave of violence deeper into Nigeria by the Boko Haram.

By targeting Nigeria’s Shia community, it is really the country’s first line of defense against terror Saudi Arabia aimed to lay waste.

A longstanding advocate for peace and interfaith cooperation Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaki has stood a rampart against the likes of Boko Haram – a protective shield to the advances of Wahhabism into the African continent.

Sheikh Zakzaki and his family were targeted because their voices have carried the widest in Nigeria, offering the hope that together Nigerians could indeed fight off and defeat the black plague of takfirism.

Political activists commented on Thursday (December 17, 2015) that the Nigerian army forces were burying and setting corpses on fire to cover for their crimes.

“The Nigerian army has buried in mass graves and burnt a large number of dead bodies of those Muslims who have been massacred in the recent army forces’ attacks,” activists told media.

Today many of those who survived Zaria violence have been imprisoned under trumped up charges – abused and oppressed for they refused to abide by Riyadh ‘s narrative of hate and sectarian exclusion.

On December 15, the Islamic Human Rights Commission published a statement in which it denounced Nigerian authorities’ treatment of Shia prisoners. “IHRC is concerned that neither he nor any of the many detainees who have been shot and injured, are receiving any or adequate medical attention,” a press release read.

Officials in Abuja have so far been silent on the matter.

Among much despair and utter bewilderment, one voice has carried above the crowd, one voice has stubbornly spoke of unity and tolerance – a testament to her father’s legacy.

In an open letter published on the IHRC website Nusaibah Zakzaki called: “I am not a Shia Muslim, I am just a Muslim, and NOTHING comes before the name Muslim. We Muslims should not accept names like that. Names that segregates us into different types of Islam, there is only one type of Islam brought by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his Family).”

She added: “It’s really unfortunate and disappointing how I see some of our brothers and sisters referring to what happened in Zaria as a massacre of Shias, as if these people (The Nigerian government and Army) attacked us because we gravitate to the Shia school of thought. As if there are no other people in Nigeria that gravitate towards the same school of thought but were not attacked.”

After all the heartache she was put through it is still peace and tolerance Shiekh Zakzaki’s daughter called for, when she could have very well demanded vengeance.

And while Saudi officials continue to spit the venom of ethnic divisions and sectarianism to advance their nefarious agenda, it is those voices campaigning for social cohesion and religious tolerance which have been labeled divergent.

Maybe it is time we review those truths we were told to never question.

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